We'll again dance the Global Underscore in C'ville, an especially beautiful Contact Jam happening simultaneously all around the world!

The Underscore brings awareness to the states that occur in the practice of contact improvisation. It follows the stages of arrival, development, and resolution that naturally tend to occur at contact improv jams. By naming the elements and flows of encounters with self and other, we are able to become more resonant with each moment and possibility. After the initial "assembly" of verbal check-ins, the score is danced as an open, focused jam until the final "harvest" time of sharing reflections of individual experience.

The Global Underscore happens simultaneously around the world on the summer solstice each year. Through this shared practice we grow the connectedness of the community in both practice and awareness.

A "talk through" overview of the underscore will happen at the beginning of the event. There are no rules or choreography to learn. All are welcome with the intention to dance with focus from your deepest self.

Here's a textual rundown of the underscore, thanks to Seattle Contact Improv Lab, originally copied from an Amsterdam jam. The glyphs image is our own C'ville version, painted by Megan.

UNDERSCORE:

Developed by Nancy Stark Smith, it is a structure that organizes a
contact improv and allows people to work together in a warm-up or an
improv session. It generates a very interesting frame to share that may
orient the improv and provides a language to be able talk about the
experience later.

I. Sequential Aspects: These aspects of the Score serve as a guide
that develops sequentially. The changes from one aspect to the next
occurs spontaneously for each dancer rather than being strictly
controlled.

Arriving:

Arriving energetically: bring the focus to the present.

Arriving Physically: bring the attention to the sensation you have in the body at this moment.

Assembly (optional): coming together to talk in a circle (names, injuries, how long it will last)

iv. Pre- ambulation: (optional): go through the space, open connections with the space and the people after the talk.

Skinesphere: What’s inside the skin, sensation, what we feel in the small dance.

Bonding with the earth: to relax the body, to feel the support from below, connection with the floor.

Mobilising, agitating the mass: To mix the mass with the air, by jumping, moving, to get a new organisation afterwards.

Kinesphere: Attention to what you can reach with your limbs.

Low kinesphere: Dome, centre on the floor.

High kinesphere: With the centre high.

(Maybe a moment to balance, to increase our tone.)

Expanding and traveling kinesphere: The base of it is the connection with your centre and with the floor. Breath.

Overlapping kinespheres: We start to be more conscious of the others in the space.

Connections- Grazing: Short connections happening during the Overlapping Ks. Between one and the other is your solo.

Coincidence: same time same thing.

Confluence: two rivers that meet.

Divergence

Touch

Attraction: is magnetic, you feel attracted by a body or a movement.

Repulsion or Aversion

Intersection: cross ways.

Influence: music, people…

Contrast: acknowledge that difference is a way of connection.

Collisions: soft, they wake us up.

Tangent: when our route meets another just on a point.

Empathy and Resonance: I feel something from the distance.

Shearing: from shearing sheeps.

Engagement: At some point we start to be more implicated with the connection.

Development: developing a duo

Resolution: disengagement, end of the duo.

Re-circulation through the score: Allow the sensation to continue. Where am I? What do I want to do? Don’t cut it, don’t escape to drink water.

Open Score: We can use different ways to re-enter the score.

Observation

Re-Entrance

Final Resolution of the room: The beginning of the last chapter. Each person resolves his own
activity arriving to stillness where we can feel the experience of had
been dancing.

Disengagement of the whole pattern: From the stillness we imagine the group as a crystalline form, and when we are ready….end of the total design.

Reflection and Harvest: Introspective revision of the body. And then harvest, you may write or draw or…

Sharing: Harvest’s celebration. Listening to the authentic of the personal experience, we learn, we feel.

II. Non Sequential Aspects- Any time All the time:

Streaming: Current, flow, stream. Small particles of light in movement (like the fffffff of the tv). Vital force. Related with the breath.

Gap: temporal moment of absence of reference. You don’t have
orientation.If we experience a gap we may focus on the streaming, for
the current not to diminish, because we need it to orient ourselves.
Also allow ourselves to explore the gap, we don’t have to fill it
always.

Telescoping Mind: We can zoom in and out when we like to.

Zoom in: We concentrate on a particular sensation and we increase the focus. It gives context.

Zoom out: Consciousness of the total composition, without loosing the consciousness of what we are doing.

Idiot Button: When it gets too much the trying to be aware of so many things we
press this button and we simplify. We feel, we breath, and if we want
awareness we press it again.

Please REGISTER HERE if you'd like to come to our Global Underscore on Sat. June 22nd 10am-1pm in Charlottesville!